Children of Evil: What Happened to the Children of 15 of the Worst Leaders
What if your dad was considered one of the worst people on the face of the earth? Osama Bin Laden? Benito Mussolini? Muammar al-Gaddafi? Is it possible to live a normal life when your childhood was surrounded by bloodshed?
This book of 15 profiles, tells you what happened to the children of dictators.
This book of 15 profiles, tells you what happened to the children of dictators.
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Children of Evil PDF and ePub |
Excerpt
Introduction
Being the son or daughter of an infamous tyrant is a hard burden to bear. The children of dictators rarely end up enjoying the wealth, power, or fame of their notorious fathers. Some of them even end up dead because of their fathers’ actions.
The sons of Saddam Hussein, Mao Zedong, and Muammar al Gaddafi perished in the wars their fathers started. The son of Joseph Stalin was abandoned to the Nazis and died in a concentration camp during World War II. Other tyrants’ children ended up broke and living in obscurity. The daughters of Stalin and Castro eventually fled the "utopias" their fathers created and ended up living in the United States.
Even inheriting the job of dictator doesn’t result in a happy ending, as Bashar Assad and Baby Doc Duvalier have discovered. Assad is fighting for his life in a brutal civil war, and Baby Doc endured 25 years of exile in France. He’s now back home in Haiti and facing trial for his crimes.
Dictatorship brings misery on everybody around it, including the family of the dictator himself. Here are 15 brutal leaders and what happened to those who shared the closest bonds with them.
Benito Mussolini’s Children: Fascism in the Family
The founding father of Fascism and role model for Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini was also a father. The Italian dictator had six children with two different women. Like most dictators, he didn’t treat his family very well.
Mussolini was a bigamist; he was married to two women at the same time during World War II: Ida Dasler and Rachele Guidi. Guidi had been Mussolini’s live-in girlfriend since 1910; he married Dasler in 1914, so he was cheating on her. In 1915 Mussolini married Guidi even though he had never divorced Dasler, in clear violation of Italian law. Italy was a staunchly Catholic country where divorce was illegal.
From Delinquent Dad to Dictator
Like Stalin, Mussolini abandoned his first wife and son. Worse, like Stalin, Mussolini deliberately arranged the death of his son to protect his reputation. Mussolini had his own son and the child’s mother murdered to cover up the fact that he was a delinquent dad.
Almost as soon as he seized power in 1922 Mussolini sent his fascist goons to Milan to destroy all traces of his relationship with Ida Dasler. They destroyed official documents but missed a marriage certificate. They also missed documents ordering Mussolini to make child support payments to Ida; the Il Duce, or leader of Italy, was also a delinquent dad. Once in power, Mussolini needed the support of the church, so he tried to portray himself as a good family man. The existence of another wife and a neglected child didn’t help that image.
Ida Dasler kept maintaining that she was Mrs. Mussolini, so the fascists silenced her by putting her in a mental hospital. Part of the reason they wanted her locked up was obvious; she had proof that Mussolini was actually a paid propagandist for the French government during World War I. During the war Mussolini had attracted attention by leaving the Socialist Party, which opposed Italian involvement in the conflict, and starting his own party that demanded Italy declare war on France’s enemies: Germany, Turkey, and Austria. Dasler could prove the great patriot was nothing more than a paid stooge.
In a cruel twist, fascist authorities told Ida’s son that she was dead when she was still alive. Ida was eventually transferred to an asylum near Venice where she died of a “brain hemorrhage” in 1937. The cause of the brain hemorrhage was never revealed, but it was probably a bullet.
Despite his mother’s fate Benito Jr. kept telling everybody who his father was. He was kidnapped and, like his mother, imprisoned in a mental hospital, where he died in 1942. Young Mussolini was apparently kept in drug induced comas for years to keep him from talking. Some accounts indicate that Benito Jr. actually died of lethal injections.
Mussolini’s Official Family
Mussolini’s other children by Rachele were luckier than Benito Jr. His daughter Edda married Count Ciano, one of Italy’s richest and most famous noblemen. The other kids lived in luxury in Rome even as Benito was being abused and murdered in the asylum.
Unlike Mussolini himself, most of his children survived World War II and the destruction of Il Duce’s fascist empire. One of Mussolini’s sons, Bruno, was killed testing a bomber in 1941.
The Il Duce’s other children were his sons Vittorio and Romano and daughter, Anna Maria. Their activities during the war were obscure, but they survived Mussolini’s overthrow, Nazi occupation of Italy, Allied invasion of Italy, and vicious fighting between Italian partisans and fascists’ loyal to Mussolini. After his overthrow in 1943, Mussolini was rescued by Nazi commandos and set up as leader of an Italian Social Republic; the official Italian government had changed sides and joined the Allies.
Death of Il Duce
Mussolini’s kids didn’t play a role in the Italian Social Republic, which collapsed in 1945. None of Mussolini’s children were present when Communist guerrillas caught Il Duce near Milan; instead, he was accompanied by his mistress, Clara Petacci. The two were running away to Switzerland. Instead of exile, Il Duce and Petacci were strung up and shot in the back of a moving truck.
Mussolini’s children were not able to reclaim their father’s body for ten years. The dictator’s corpse was first hung up in Milan, where it was desecrated by resistance fighters. It was then hidden for a decade before being returned to the family. Mussolini’s corpse was finally placed in his family crypt in his hometown of Predappio, Italy.
Sophia Loren’s Niece and Mussolini’s Granddaughter Continue the Family Tradition
Not surprisingly, Mussolini’s surviving children maintained a low profile after the war. Only one of Il Duce’s surviving children, Romano, became famous after the war by marrying Anna Maria Villani Scicolone, the younger sister of movie star Sophia Loren. The two later divorced, but they had a daughter, Alessandra Mussolini, who has become a famous and colorful political leader in her own right.
Before she went into politics, Alessandra Mussolini worked as an actress and a model. Among other things, she appeared topless in the Italian and German versions of Playboy. She also had a brief career as a pop singer in the early 1980s. Alessandra’s acting career ended because producers objected to the name Mussolini.
Alessandra Mussolini went into politics in 1992 and got elected to parliament; she called herself a “conservative” because fascism is illegal in Italy. She left the National Alliance Party in 2002 when its leaders attacked her grandfather’s legacy. Alessandra Mussolini organized her own political party, Social Action or Social Alternative, which combines fascism and feminism. She was eventually elected to the European Parliament where she feuded with fascists from other European countries.
Alessandra Mussolini is still in the Italian parliament where her Social Action party has been a key part of controversial former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s coalition. Since she’s still fairly young, there’s a possibility that Alessandra Mussolini might become Italy’s prime minister after the elderly Berlusconi passes from the scene.
Bibliography
Owen, Richard. "Power-mad Mussolini sacrificed wife and son." 13 January 2005. timesolnine.co.uk/webarchive.org. The Times/Sunday Times Feature Article. 17 June 2013.
Wikipedia "Benito Mussolini." n.d. en.wikipedia.org. Online Encyclopedia Entry. 27 June 2013.
Being the son or daughter of an infamous tyrant is a hard burden to bear. The children of dictators rarely end up enjoying the wealth, power, or fame of their notorious fathers. Some of them even end up dead because of their fathers’ actions.
The sons of Saddam Hussein, Mao Zedong, and Muammar al Gaddafi perished in the wars their fathers started. The son of Joseph Stalin was abandoned to the Nazis and died in a concentration camp during World War II. Other tyrants’ children ended up broke and living in obscurity. The daughters of Stalin and Castro eventually fled the "utopias" their fathers created and ended up living in the United States.
Even inheriting the job of dictator doesn’t result in a happy ending, as Bashar Assad and Baby Doc Duvalier have discovered. Assad is fighting for his life in a brutal civil war, and Baby Doc endured 25 years of exile in France. He’s now back home in Haiti and facing trial for his crimes.
Dictatorship brings misery on everybody around it, including the family of the dictator himself. Here are 15 brutal leaders and what happened to those who shared the closest bonds with them.
Benito Mussolini’s Children: Fascism in the Family
The founding father of Fascism and role model for Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini was also a father. The Italian dictator had six children with two different women. Like most dictators, he didn’t treat his family very well.
Mussolini was a bigamist; he was married to two women at the same time during World War II: Ida Dasler and Rachele Guidi. Guidi had been Mussolini’s live-in girlfriend since 1910; he married Dasler in 1914, so he was cheating on her. In 1915 Mussolini married Guidi even though he had never divorced Dasler, in clear violation of Italian law. Italy was a staunchly Catholic country where divorce was illegal.
From Delinquent Dad to Dictator
Like Stalin, Mussolini abandoned his first wife and son. Worse, like Stalin, Mussolini deliberately arranged the death of his son to protect his reputation. Mussolini had his own son and the child’s mother murdered to cover up the fact that he was a delinquent dad.
Almost as soon as he seized power in 1922 Mussolini sent his fascist goons to Milan to destroy all traces of his relationship with Ida Dasler. They destroyed official documents but missed a marriage certificate. They also missed documents ordering Mussolini to make child support payments to Ida; the Il Duce, or leader of Italy, was also a delinquent dad. Once in power, Mussolini needed the support of the church, so he tried to portray himself as a good family man. The existence of another wife and a neglected child didn’t help that image.
Ida Dasler kept maintaining that she was Mrs. Mussolini, so the fascists silenced her by putting her in a mental hospital. Part of the reason they wanted her locked up was obvious; she had proof that Mussolini was actually a paid propagandist for the French government during World War I. During the war Mussolini had attracted attention by leaving the Socialist Party, which opposed Italian involvement in the conflict, and starting his own party that demanded Italy declare war on France’s enemies: Germany, Turkey, and Austria. Dasler could prove the great patriot was nothing more than a paid stooge.
In a cruel twist, fascist authorities told Ida’s son that she was dead when she was still alive. Ida was eventually transferred to an asylum near Venice where she died of a “brain hemorrhage” in 1937. The cause of the brain hemorrhage was never revealed, but it was probably a bullet.
Despite his mother’s fate Benito Jr. kept telling everybody who his father was. He was kidnapped and, like his mother, imprisoned in a mental hospital, where he died in 1942. Young Mussolini was apparently kept in drug induced comas for years to keep him from talking. Some accounts indicate that Benito Jr. actually died of lethal injections.
Mussolini’s Official Family
Mussolini’s other children by Rachele were luckier than Benito Jr. His daughter Edda married Count Ciano, one of Italy’s richest and most famous noblemen. The other kids lived in luxury in Rome even as Benito was being abused and murdered in the asylum.
Unlike Mussolini himself, most of his children survived World War II and the destruction of Il Duce’s fascist empire. One of Mussolini’s sons, Bruno, was killed testing a bomber in 1941.
The Il Duce’s other children were his sons Vittorio and Romano and daughter, Anna Maria. Their activities during the war were obscure, but they survived Mussolini’s overthrow, Nazi occupation of Italy, Allied invasion of Italy, and vicious fighting between Italian partisans and fascists’ loyal to Mussolini. After his overthrow in 1943, Mussolini was rescued by Nazi commandos and set up as leader of an Italian Social Republic; the official Italian government had changed sides and joined the Allies.
Death of Il Duce
Mussolini’s kids didn’t play a role in the Italian Social Republic, which collapsed in 1945. None of Mussolini’s children were present when Communist guerrillas caught Il Duce near Milan; instead, he was accompanied by his mistress, Clara Petacci. The two were running away to Switzerland. Instead of exile, Il Duce and Petacci were strung up and shot in the back of a moving truck.
Mussolini’s children were not able to reclaim their father’s body for ten years. The dictator’s corpse was first hung up in Milan, where it was desecrated by resistance fighters. It was then hidden for a decade before being returned to the family. Mussolini’s corpse was finally placed in his family crypt in his hometown of Predappio, Italy.
Sophia Loren’s Niece and Mussolini’s Granddaughter Continue the Family Tradition
Not surprisingly, Mussolini’s surviving children maintained a low profile after the war. Only one of Il Duce’s surviving children, Romano, became famous after the war by marrying Anna Maria Villani Scicolone, the younger sister of movie star Sophia Loren. The two later divorced, but they had a daughter, Alessandra Mussolini, who has become a famous and colorful political leader in her own right.
Before she went into politics, Alessandra Mussolini worked as an actress and a model. Among other things, she appeared topless in the Italian and German versions of Playboy. She also had a brief career as a pop singer in the early 1980s. Alessandra’s acting career ended because producers objected to the name Mussolini.
Alessandra Mussolini went into politics in 1992 and got elected to parliament; she called herself a “conservative” because fascism is illegal in Italy. She left the National Alliance Party in 2002 when its leaders attacked her grandfather’s legacy. Alessandra Mussolini organized her own political party, Social Action or Social Alternative, which combines fascism and feminism. She was eventually elected to the European Parliament where she feuded with fascists from other European countries.
Alessandra Mussolini is still in the Italian parliament where her Social Action party has been a key part of controversial former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s coalition. Since she’s still fairly young, there’s a possibility that Alessandra Mussolini might become Italy’s prime minister after the elderly Berlusconi passes from the scene.
Bibliography
Owen, Richard. "Power-mad Mussolini sacrificed wife and son." 13 January 2005. timesolnine.co.uk/webarchive.org. The Times/Sunday Times Feature Article. 17 June 2013.
Wikipedia "Benito Mussolini." n.d. en.wikipedia.org. Online Encyclopedia Entry. 27 June 2013.
